BENJAMIN WACHS: The standards aren't the problem

Friday

Dec 6, 2013 at 4:07 PMDec 6, 2013 at 4:07 PM

By Benjamin Wachs

I’ve been writing about the trouble with New York state’s school reform efforts for about 10 years now, and it’s reached the point where friends know never to mention the subject around me. At the words “grades 3-8” or “Regents Exams” I explode like a Tesla sedan and shout that the New York State Board of Regents are living demonstrations of how to succeed in education without really thinking.The recent arguments about the Common Core standards are slightly different. It’s not that the State Education Commissioner is missing the point by enough miles to fit in another time zone; it’s that this time his critics are generally missing the point too.The issue with New York schools is not the standards. The issue has never been the standards. The standards are fine, and have always been fine. They were fine in the ’90s, they were fine in the ’00’s, and they’re fine now.The standards, after all, were not what made the difference between high performing suburban schools and desperately poorly performing urban and rural schools: All three kinds of schools used the same standards. The Common Core Standards may indeed be “more rigorous,” but that has nothing to do with whether a specific school has succeeded or failed. And while some schools in New York very clearly are failing — Big 5 district schools have been little more than drop-out factories for decades — many other schools, using the exact same standards, were giving their students educations that is comparable to the best anywhere.So yes, by all means: Keep standards high. Keep them “rigorous.” And if you want them to be in common with 46 other states, sure — why not?But the standards are not, and never have been, the vital issue at stake in our schools. The vital issue is how we measure whether these standards are being met.New York hopped on the “standardized testing” bandwagon even before No Child Left Behind — which is like getting run over by the wagon and dragged along into the next century. That’s the problem. The state has, against the advice of its own experts, conflated “high standards” with “standardized testing.” As though the two go together like a horse and carriage, when in fact the relationship is much more like a horse and barometer. A horse is a thing that can be measured, and a barometer is a device for measuring, absolutely — but in most circumstances it is the wrong tool to apply to the animal in question.Study after study has shown that standardized testing is a poor predictor of how well students understand material; instead, it measures how well they take standardized tests. Meanwhile the emphasis on standardized testing tends to pervert curriculums into test-prep, so that nothing else is learned. This is documented, demonstrated and proven.So it is entirely possible to have extremely high standards and then ruin them through the measuring process. Like a horse and glue factory. That’s where New York is now.Some “drill-and-kill” is certainly appropriate — certain fundamentals are best taught that way, and can be measured that way. But the kind of skills we really care about — critical thinking, creative problem solving, intellectual curiosity, applying what is known to the real world, good citizenship — not only cannot be measured by standardized tests, but are actually driven out by an education focused on standardized evaluation.Telling us “we need higher standards” ignores that fact. We have high standards. They’re fine. Higher standards are fine too. Make ’em as high as you want. The problem is the testing regimen the state uses to measure them.The state likes standardized exams because they’re easy to administer, relatively cheap to evaluate, and make comparisons across school districts easy.You’ll notice that none of these reasons have anything to do with student learning. They neither enhance learning nor measure it adequately. That’s the problem. That’s what we should be focused on.Benjamin Wachs writes for Messenger Post Media, and archives his work at www.TheWachsGallery.com. Email him at Benjamin@Fiction365.com.